


Fairy Godmother

by Lanerose



Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 02:03:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lanerose/pseuds/Lanerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fakir would really like to be able to finish this story.  Or, on getting to happily ever after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fairy Godmother

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sumeria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sumeria/gifts).



~~Once upon a time, there was a girl.~~

 

Fakir draws a sharp strike through the words.  He has begun this way before.  He has begun this way a hundred times, and it has come to nothing.  He dips his pen in the inkwell again, looking at the page.  He stares at it as he sets the nub of the pen onto the page. 

 

He puts the pen down again, gets up, and paces to the edge of the room, then back again.  He wanders back and forth.  Back and forth, back and forth.  Outside, the day is sunny and cheerful as her smile, Kankan Town still enjoying excellent weather even though the story is over.

 

Or is it?

 

Fakir sets back down at the desk and picks up his pen again.

 

~~Once upon a time, there was a girl.  But this girl was not just any girl, you see, for once upon a time she had been a duck.~~

 

He strikes the words again, crumples up the page, and draws a new one forward.  He puts the pen to the page.  Ink drops onto the page, leaving small pools that sink slowly into the parchment. 

 

He pulls the pen back.  Puts it to the page again.

 

“Quack quack quack!”  The sound floats through the open window.  Fakir sets his pen aside and looks at the clock.  Sure enough, it’s already late afternoon.  He rises to his feet and heads outside, pausing only long enough to pick up his fishing reel and a packet of bread crumbs for Duck.

 

*****

 

On Saturday, Fakir goes shopping, as he has every Saturday since Mytho and Rue returned to the story three years ago. 

 

“Two marks, please,” the baker says as he passes Fakir a bundle containing his usual order.  He can smell the single full loaf, ready for him, can hear the crumpled back with all of the leftovers from baking that he will offer to Duck over the week.  He hands over the two marks.

 

“Thank you,” he says. 

 

“Hello, Fakir,” call a couple of girls as he walks passed them on his way back to Duck’s Pond.  He nods at them, no smile, but no scowl either.  One of them sighs, and he rolls his eyes when he hears one say, “He’ll never notice us properly.  Do you think maybe he’s gay?”

 

As he is heading out of town, a sound catches in his ears.  It comes upon him slowly at first, a tinny tune rising and falling like carnival music.  He stops.  He has heard this before.  Turns.  Walks to the bridge, where surely enough, a woman stands.  The rest of the people hurry past, but he remains still, transfixed.  Her hair is green, and how that alone hasn’t stopped more people, Fakir doesn’t know.  Or maybe he does.  She is turning a handle, a crank, really, on a box, and the sound of carnival music is filling the air all around her.  He shifts his groceries in his hands and walks up to her.

 

She stops turning the crank and smiles at him.

 

“Miss Edel,” he says, and she winks.

 

“It starts with a boy,” she says.

 

“What - ?” He begins, but she is already turning the crank again and walking away.

 

“It starts with a boy,” she repeats over the rising and falling music.  Mist swells over the bridge.  When it clears, she is gone.

 

Someone bumps into him.

 

“Hey buddy, watch where you’re going!”

 

Fakir stumbles off the bridge, blinking furiously in the bright mid-day sun.

 

*****

 

He doesn’t tell Duck, partly because he’s never sure how much of what he says she understands now, partly because he doesn’t want to get her hopes up if she does understand everything, and mostly because he isn’t entirely sure that it even happened and he doesn’t want her to worry about his sanity on top of worrying about how they’ll ever get her back to being a girl again.

 

That night, though -

 

That night, when he sets his pen to paper, for the first time in many years, he does not begin with a girl.

 

~~Once upon a time, there was a prince.~~

 

But no, that isn’t this story.  He has already written their story; they are living it now, enjoying their happily ever after somewhere far, far away from here.  He wanted that for them, for his best friend Mytho and even for Rue.  He cannot regret giving that to them.

 

But is it wrong for him to want that for himself?

 

He picks the pen up again.  Duck is sitting inside with him tonight, floating in a bucket on the table while they wait for an unusually cold night to pass.

 

He puts the tip on the page, and writes.

 

****

 

Once upon a time, there was a boy.  He was a very ordinary boy, except for three little things.  The first was that his in a prior life, he had been a heroic knight.  The second was that his best friend was a prince. 

 

The third was that sometimes, the stories that he wrote came true.

 

He didn’t write a lot of stories.  Instead, he preferred to spend his days looking after his idiot best friend, who had a rather impressive tendency for throwing himself into danger to save others with no thought for himself.  It drove the boy crazy that no matter how hard he tried, his best friend still seemed to find ways to get into trouble.  His least favorite kind of trouble came in the form of a dark-haired girl from the town, who had figured out that his best friend was an idiot and took advantage of that fact.  Not a lot, though, so the boy let it continue happening even though he didn’t really like it.

 

One day, when the boy had made the mistake of looking away for five seconds, his best friend fell out a window without any pants on and wound up in the arms of a pretty red-head.  The boy didn’t like the red-head.  She taught his best friend about all sorts of unpleasant things, like anxiety, loneliness, and fear.  What’s more, she didn’t even seem to realize that what she was doing was wrong.  Oh no, she thought that she was being _helpful_.  It was the kind of help that the boy needed like a hole in his head.

 

The boy wasn’t very nice to the red-head.  Why should he have been though?  She was dumb, and she was dangerous.  She even (as he eventually found out) wasn’t really a girl at all - she was a duck!  So this dumb, dangerous duck was hurting his best friend and all he could think was that she needed to be stopped.

 

At the same time, there was another red-head called Duck.  Duck was actually both red-heads, but he didn’t know that at first.  What he knew was that Duck was a terrible dancer, but she was kind, and warm, and like his sister, would probably get better at dancing once she grew into her limbs.  He also knew that she only had eyes for his best friend, which was a little unfortunate.  So he...  well, he wasn’t the nicest boy, so he may have pulled her pigtails a time or twenty.

 

Back to the first red-head.  She was dumb, but even she eventually figured out that she was hurting his best friend.  He liked her quite a bit better when she offered to leave his best friend alone after she finally parsed it.

 

Not long after that, there came a time when she bowed to the boy and his best friend.

 

“I don’t have any wish to fight you,” she said, and the boy believed her.

 

It happened slowly, after that, for the boy.  He realized that she and Duck were the same person (and that they were also a duck).  And he realized the lengths to which she would go - the true kindness in her that would give up everything she had and still find more to give away.  She was the one - the only one - who would accept that role in their story.  And perhaps he had simply spent so long looking after his idiot best friend that a sort of Stockholm syndrome had set in, but he couldn’t bring himself to do anything but try to protect her.  Try to keep her from harm.  Try to see that she continued to be all right even as they fought against his best friend, who had been put under an evil spell.

 

He wasn’t a very good protector, though, and in the end, she gave up everything that had ever benefitted her and surrendered her very self to save his best friend and that troublesome dark-haired girl who had been his childhood friend.  It was his fault, too - he wrote the story that did it, that gave his best friend a happy ending and turned the girl he realized too late that he loved into a duck.

 

She was just a duck, now.  Duck, the duck.  He supposed that was where her name came from.

 

The boy thought that he could be happy forever if only he knew that she was happy.  She seemed content, and really, that was okay, but the boy hated not knowing how she was.

 

One day, the boy’s fairy godmother appeared, and told him that he had everything backwards - that the problem wasn’t in her story, but in his.

 

So he wrote this, and left the ending open for his fairy godmother to finish, because he had no idea anymore which way to lead.

 

*****

 

The sun had come up again when Fakir set his pen down.

 

“Quack?” said Duck.  Fakir picked her up, petting her head and cuddling her to him as he walked out onto the dock and set her upon the water.

 

A presence behind him made Fakir turn.

 

“Thank you,” Edel said.  She pushed him, and he fell into the water.

 

Then everything went black.

 

****

 

“Fakir~!” called Duck.  “Come on, Fakir, wake up!  It’s time to get going if you don’t want to miss the best bread crumbs near the school!”

 

Fakir shook his head and lifted his - wings?

 

“Duck?” He asked, staring at the familiar yellow bird.

 

“Yes?” she said, and he turned took at her, suddenly realizing that he had been staring not at her, but at his own reflection upon the water.

 

“QUACK!” He said loudly, and his wings came forward to cover his mouth as Duck laughed at him.

 

“Come on, Fakir,” she said, swimming up and resting her neck against his.  “I’ll show you the way.”

 

Fakir nuzzled her back. 

 

“Are you happy, Duck?” he asked.

 

“Are you, Fakir?” she said, and her eyes were the same deep blue he had always remembered.

 

He pressed their beaks together.

 

She was staring at him when he pulled away.

 

“What are you waiting for?” He said.  “We’ll miss the best bread crumbs!”

 

“Right!” Duck said, and started swimming slowly toward the school.

 

*****

 

Edel put down the pen.  Then she picked it back up, and added one more line.

 

_And they lived happily ever after_.

 

She set the pen down again and left.


End file.
